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3.04.2015

I don't remember the new pair of shoes I bought or the brand new leather bag I got 5 years ago, I remember my adventures with Landon and the memories we created together.

During our restless nights we stay up talking about all the fun we've had together and it usually starts out like... "hey remember that one time we rode camels in India?" or "remember that one time we hiked up a volcano in Indonesia and watched the sunrise?" or "when we went mattress mudding in Idaho?"

BUT

we never would of imagined we would say... "hey remember that one time we went to the Grammys and walked the red carpet?!?" What?!

That weekend was a whirlwind of memories shared and we decided to have Valentine's a week early and go all out. I decided not to bring my camera so this post will be just a really long memory filled post of iPhone photos. So bare with me as the photographer inside of me irks that I'm posting such badly lit photos.... it's for memory's sake after all :)

THE GRAMMY'S! Where should I begin?

Well it all started when I opened my inbox and got an email from Herbal Essence saying "We want to send you to the Grammys, we love your photos and your hair..." What?!

Let me explain, as a photographer I get the most random emails all the time, some of them are spam, some of them are just weird but they're almost always random. I do a lot of random shoots in LA, and I never know what to expect so when I saw this email I just glanced over it thinking oh just another email... I had briefly mentioned it to Landon and he got so excited that it made me look over it a few more times. We both didn't know if it was real, so I emailed them back and forth wondering that if in the end we would really be going to the Grammys....

They included with the 2 Grammy tickets a 2 night stay at The Standard Hotel in Downtown LA and $1100 in prize money (which almost half of that is going to lame taxes!)

When we first arrived in LA Saturday afternoon we went straight to lunch and then shopped away. While we were sitting in the middle of Beverly Hills mall I realized I was sitting next to Duff from the Ace of Cakes on Food Network, I loved that show when I was younger so that was fun!

Here's our room... I was really slacking on the documenting part, I was in full relax mode.

The rooftop views.

And now comes the fun part... the food!! Landon and I are mega foodies and decided we were going to spend the majority of the money on food, because why not? So we first went to the #1 rated Ramen house in LA for lunch, I didn't take a photo there unfortunately but it was delicious and Landon was in heaven!

For dinner that night we went to the infamous Republique. We did lots of research and we wanted to originally go to a 7-course dinner with a celebrity chef where we pay 100$ a person, but with me being pregnant I knew I probably couldn't eat half of the foods since they had raw seafood, egg yolks and everything else yummy, so we settled on Republique because it had good ratings and was in the Los Angeles Mag as one of the top.
The place was PACKED and there was over 1.5hrs of wait but we fortunately got in past the groups and sat down quickly at the bar.

We started off with appetizers, normandy butter with fresh bread and tempura... So I wanted some prawns and everything else was in French so we went with the prawns appetizer and it ended up being tempura haha, not something I would of really wanted but it was good and tasted different from the Japanese style we've had.

I ordered the fish.

Landon ordered the seared duck with pork belly and sausage, it was huge but he did a good job with finishing it off. As always :)

That next morning, the day of the Grammys we met up with friends that lived in the building right next to our hotel and walked down to Bottega Louie a French bistro with the prettiest of pastries and macaroons.

We then went back to the hotel to get ready. When we received the package for the Grammys we got a lot of papers about parking and the red carpet and it was SO confusing, nothing made sense and we had no clue what was going on. I was able to reach someone about parking and they let us know we had to be to the red carpet by 3pm otherwise we wouldn't be allowed to walk down it, they also said there was priority parking for us with our pass... that ended up being a lie.

Getting to the red carpet was such a stress!!
I was running late as usual, being bloated and 16 wks pregnant I didn't feel the cutest which of course made me take forever getting ready. My sister let me borrow one of her formal dress so that was a positive! As we were driving to the Staples Center (5 minutes away) I realized I needed to eat NOW, so we had to find somewhere for me to run in quickly in the middle of downtown. Once we got that taken care of we followed all of the confusing signs for our parking pass. We were cutting it super close to 3pm for the red carpet so we were stressing out. Once we made it through all the lines of cars and security we were told there was no priority parking and that there was only drop-off with all passes!? So with not much time left we were desperate for a parking lot and ran over to the Staples center. We talked to a few workers there and they all said that we didn't have red carpet access with our tickets so we were extremely disappointed and decided to just sit in the shade and wait...

So after waiting for 10 minutes, Landon being the persistent one, kept asking different workers walking by if we had red carpet access, we were told by Herbal Essence that we did and we just wanted to double check. So after all of the wasted time, we ended up having the red carpet sticker on our tickets the entire time!! The worker said we didn't have much time to get to the carpet and that we were at the very opposite side of where we needed to be and everything was blocked off so we had to run. We were so hot and sweaty and my new shoes had given me horrible blisters, the insides of my shoes were covered in blood (not an exaggeration). When we finally reached the red carpet we were exhausted, sweaty, my hair was feeling really gross and I definitely did not feel like getting my picture taken :)

The blocked off street

The better photo of us is at the beginning but yeah, we were sweaty and exhausted when we finally arrived at the red carpet. Definitely a whirlwind of events.

Inside the tent was SO hot and stuffy, we were dying!

So this is Hozier the one who sings the "Take me to church" song. Everyone around us (including us) had no clue who he was but there was one girl that was so excited to see him. I figured he must of been somebody and snapped this picture, a few days later I realized it was Hozier! oh well...

And the only other artist we saw was Sam Smith. I was personally hoping to see Sia (my fav since high school)... BUT I figured if there was one artist to see for the Grammys 2015 it would be Sam Smith since he swept the awards. Since we got to the red carpet so late, we only saw him.

And then he walked right up to us, Landon got a good video of him and he took a selfie with the girl next to me. We aren't really into the whole "celebrity fame" thing but it was still fun!

This was taken inside the Staples Center, the red carpet was in the white tents.

The performances were so great live and it was fun to see everyone.

And just to document my highlight of the show: I love love Sia, I know she's weird but I think she's such a talented artist and I've been listening to her since high school. She stopped touring after she started getting panic attacks and now she completely hides her face on all promotion performances on TV shows... BUT it's been on my bucket list since I was little to see her perform... I told Landon that even if he had to fly me to Australia that I needed to go see or hear her perform live before I die!! Well after all of her anxiety and panic issues I knew I would never get the chance to see her live, and when I found out we were going to the Grammys I thought this might be my only chance to see her... Well the Grammys never announced she was performing beforehand so I told myself that it wasn't going to happen and long story short I was so excited when they announced she was singing I went to a closer seat and was so excited, so thank you Grammys!

After the show:

For dinner we opted out for another fancy dinner and went for some greasy fast food and brought it back to the hotel. I was exhausted and just wanted to relax.

And heres my baby bump at 16 weeks, it's gone when I wake up but by the end of the night bloating takes over and gives me a nice bump, we decided to document it after the show. I can't wait to get out of this middle stage and start showing more!

You two and your life! Love reading about it. You looked fabulous as usual, despite the exhaustion! And I can't believe Hozier was RIGHT THERE! I gasped when I saw that picture haha, sounds like a great memory!

Ah ha!! I was wondering the story behind getting to go to the Grammy's! That's so random that you got the opportunity offered to you thru an email! How fun! Just so you know, you may have felt sweaty and gross, but you didn't look it! Even after all that running! And running at 16 weeks pregnant, in a formal gown and heels, is an accomplishment all on it's own! LOL!! Thanks for sharing your pictures and story of your weekend! <3